Thanking The Troll
Posted on June 28, 2009
Filed Under Personal, Random Rant | 2 Comments
Are SGF local bloggers haters and trolls or are they your mentor/adviser in an ally sort of way? In my mind, bloggers should back other bloggers up, especially if they are a local area blogger, part of an association that would want to promote unity between other area bloggers. Before this post, I was thinking we should all be nice to each other, but really we should all be candid in both posts and comments.
I am sure you can imagine my surprise when I received a rude comment on a recent post I wrote, from a local SGF blogger trying to remain anonymous. Rarely do anonymous comments get past me, thanks to Woopra’s excellent tracking statistics. I’m not naive enough to expect that all my comments received will be nice ones, as I do a lot of “ranting” on my blog. Believe me, I’ve got my fair share of haters and blog trolls. And this isn’t a story of “poor me, this guy was mean to me” because it has actually taught me something. You never know who you are talking to and you never know what you will learn from the experience.
After going back and forth with me defending myself and my blog, my troll actually made some good points. I’ve got to be a little more objective in my points of view and look at it from both sides, not just mine. Otherwise, I do come off as sounding like an “elitist.” It seems that there is always something fueling the fire on either side. It may be the reader’s personal experiences still haunting them, something got under their skin, or they are needing to vent in some way or another. Isn’t that one of the primary purposes of blogging?
I’m grateful for what the troll taught me. He was candid in telling me that I sounded a little snotty. He told me his side of the story and what was rattling his cage about my post. He also told me (in a round-about way) that I needed to tone it down a bit. He gave me a lot to think about and he taught me a lot. But on the flip side of that coin, my troll also made some huge assumptions about me that are not true, of which he acknowledged. A few days and apologies on both ends later, my troll then refers a friend to me for business.
Thank you, troll. It’s all water under the bridge now. 
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2 Responses to “Thanking The Troll”
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Link Me In!
The troll has the most to learn!
Ahhh…how about a big hug everybody?